Life Of E's

If you want to write a “top ten” list to help people be more productive, just do the following:

Title your set of tips, e.g., “Top Ten Productivity Tips to Help You _________.”

Write an introduction. Your introduction can be one sentence or a full paragraph. It’s just a little introductory piece that prepares everyone for the tips you have written. For example, “You know how you always wonder about this…” or “If you’ve ever had this happen and you’ve tried to figure out if there are any solutions, well, here are 10 tips for…”. All you need to do is just give the reader a little bit of an intro so that he/she doesn’t just see your title and then Tip 1, Tip 2. People like just the tiniest bit of preparation, that is so that they think, Oh, here’s what I’m about to read about.” So one sentence up to about a paragraph is usually plenty.

Write your tips. This is what people are there to read, i.e., your top ten productivity tips for ______. And if you are wondering “Now, how long do these need to be?” the answer is, “It depends.” It might be a short, bulleted list. Other times, you may have a tip and then an explanatory sentence or two. That is up to you and generally depends on whether you need or want to add more explanation (or even examples). Remember, however, that even though you could talk about the information in some of your tips for about 16 pages, people were attracted to your list or article because they saw the word “tips.” They are looking for something quick. If you are writing for the web, know that people are more likely to read what you have written if it shows up on their screen without a great deal of scrolling. If they choose to print it in order to have the information handy, they often like the tips to print in one, no more than two, pages. So you want to keep it reasonably succinct.

Write your closing. Write a sentence or paragraph (which follows the tips) that provides some kind of a closing idea. This is where you are just pulling your ideas together for your reader. You could make a recommendation for a book by writing, “One of the good resources I’ve read to learn more about this was…” and you would just put the name of a book in there. That might be your closing. Or, you could summarize the ideas in a sentence or two. Another way of pulling it all together is writing a ‘call to action’ for your readers to implement one or more of the ideas you have shared with them in your article or blog post.

Create a resource box/contact information section: Lastly, you will need to have what is called your “resource box.” Realize that at the end of your tips, you want to let people know who you are, what you do, and how they can get in touch with you to learn more. There are MANY ways of setting these up depending on who will be reading your tips and what your overall purpose is for sharing your ideas. The main idea to keep in minds is that you want to provide an invitation to readers to make contact.

Now get started generating lists of ten productivity tips (or whatever number of ideas you are ready to share). Use the structure of this article to help you get those ideas into a format so that you can help others.

And if you would like a venue for sharing your Top Ten Productivity Tips, then feel free to access

** http://toptenproductivitytips.com/ContributorInfo.php

It’s a great new project and you can be part of it! I look forward to reviewing what you’ve written and sharing it with a global audience!

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Tags: blog, Productivity, tips, write, writing